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Cumana, Coro, the island of Margareta, and Curassao, are the parts of South America that abound most in plants of the nopal family. There only, a botanist, after a long residence, could compose a monography of the genus cactus, the species of which vary not only in their flowers and fruits, but also in the form of their articulated stems, the number of costae, and the disposition of the thorns.
It was large, furnished with shelves from top to bottom, occupied in the middle by a sort of counter table on which also were spread rows of books. Father Maximin said to Durtal, "We are not very rich, but at any rate we possess tools for work fairly complete on theology and the monography of the cloisters."
The retort, so he informed Madame Hanska, made him laugh immoderately. Perhaps; but the laugh must have been somewhat forced what the French call "yellow." In the Monography, men of letters, baptized by the novelist gendelettres one of the few words coined by Balzac which have become naturalized may be divided into several categories.
Neither of the two chief dramatis personae was capable of properly interesting a theatrical audience. The character of Jules is contemptible from beginning to end, and that of Pamela ceases to attract after the trial. The conclusion of this play, as that of Vautrin, is an anticlimax and leaves an unsatisfactory impression. Why did Balzac write his Monography of the Parisian Press?
Balzac resented the modifications, which explains his equanimity on hearing, as he travelled homewards, that the piece had fallen flat. He considered that, presented as he wrote it, the chances of success would have been greater. He was wrong, and those critics as well who attributed the failure to enmities arising out of a recent publication of his, entitled the Monography of the Press.
According to the author of the Monography, the pamphlet is the brochure masterpiece; and he himself is its most illustrious exponent. The Abbe de Lamennais does not know how to speak to the proletariat. He is not Spartacus enough, not Marat enough, not Calvin enough; he does not understand how to storm the positions of the ignoble bourgeoisie at present in power.
Within a very few years, Janin was to bury the hatchet of polemics beside Balzac's grave, and, forgetting the soreness generated in him by the Monography of the Press to constitute himself the dead author's apologist. Besides his continuation of Lucien de Rubempre's story in the Splendour and Wretchedness of Courtezans, Balzac published, in the year 1843, two complete novels, viz.
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